


Box of Knives

by AnaliseGrey



Series: Where Light Fears to Tread [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Character Study, Dr. Anna Ripley is her own warning, Gen, Percy is a bit of a mess, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 22:20:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20767841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaliseGrey/pseuds/AnaliseGrey
Summary: Dr. Anna Ripley is a creature of specificity.She’s exacting, precise and particular about the way she goes about things. Percy spends most of a week under her tender care learning just how meticulous she is.Despite knowing she’s precise, that she’s exacting and particular and thorough, despite all of that, Percy can’t help but have the unshakeable and unnerving conviction that his insides are not as they should be, that she's put something backwrong.





	Box of Knives

Dr. Anna Ripley is a creature of specificity.

She’s exacting, precise and particular about the way she goes about things. Percy spends most of a week under her tender care learning just how meticulous she is.

Despite knowing she’s precise, that she’s exacting and particular and thorough, despite all of that, Percy can’t help but have the unshakable and unnerving conviction that his insides are not as they should be, that she's put something back _ wrong_. The most maddening part of the whole situation, in his opinion, the thing that drives him to utter and overwhelming distraction, is that there’s no way to _ know_.

His inability to check that his organs are where they should be, it eats at him like etching fluid, a crawling under his skin he can’t escape.

He still feels her inside him, her hands, moving things around inside his abdominal cavity, hears the wet squelches they make as she prods them, smells the iron tang of his blood, thick and suffocating in the air, the odd slip-slide of his intestines through her fingers. His memories of it are blurry, only showing themselves in perfect clarity in his dreams. Ripley- ‘_Call me Anna, dear, we’re going to be _ ** _very_ ** _ close_.’- with glistening red smeared up to her elbows, wearing a blood-stained apron, caliper in one hand and the other a steadying presence on his arm as he lies there helpless, flayed open and bleeding, on her table.

‘_This is for science,_’ dream Anna says with the same small smile she always wore while working on him. ‘_It’s for science, and so we must be precise, I’m sure you understand. You’re a clever boy, Percival, I’ve seen your notes, your designs. You have the same respect for the scientific process as I do; we're very alike, you and I.” _ She regards him with a look that could be considered fond if she weren't covered with blood- _ his _ blood_. “If you move too much, I _ will _ have to start over, so it’s in your best interest not to squirm.” _

He feels it, the _ wrongness _ of it, the touch of her _ inside _ him, and he can’t get away from it. The remembered touch of her hands on his skin makes him shudder, and he scrubs at it until he’s red and raw and bleeding; it helps, to an extent, but he can never be rid of her, not entirely. There’s no way to scour it out, no way to burn it away, no relief from the constant nagging knowledge that there’s something _ off _, something insidiously lurking under the surface, just waiting to crawl out of him when he least expects it.

He runs his fingers over the scar, the one that runs from his collarbone down to his navel, neatly healed but still visible, and wonders how difficult it would be to slice himself open again, to open himself up and make sure everything is right. There are a few times in the early days with the group that he almost asks, where he’s been injured in battle, out of his mind with pain, and it’s on the tip of his tongue to turn to Pike as she’s healing him and ask, ‘_Pike, while you’re in there, would you mind terribly making sure everything is as it should be? You see I was under the care of a madwoman who carved me open like a roast, and I’d very much like to be sure she put things back properly._’ 

Of course he doesn’t say any of that. He _ can’t. _ He knows how that would sound, the horrified, concerned looks he’d get; he’s not explaining himself to _ anyone_, and he knows saying something like that would only invite a swift and immediate barrage of questions, none of which he has any intention of answering.

Time passes, their adventures continue, and for awhile he’s able to forget. Well- ‘forget’ is a strong word; he still sees his family in his dreams, their eyes wet and pleading though they don’t speak, their skin gray and mottled, drawn in death. Asking him without words why he ran, why he’s abandoned them, why he won’t come home. Little Cassandra, full of arrows, bleeding out across an expanse of white, her blood the only color he can see. In his waking hours, he can keep busy enough that he’s able to go hours at a time without thinking about it.

And then.

Then the Briarwoods come to Emon, and he can’t hide anymore.

His friends corner him in his workshop, where he’s supposed to feel safe, where he’s supposed to be the one in control, and they ask him. They ask who the Briarwoods are, why he looks like he’s seen a ghost.

And he tells them.

He tells them about the Briarwoods. About how they came to dinner, because the rules of decorum and hospitality dictated that they be invited right in. He tells them about how in the course of a night most of his family was slaughtered. He didn’t see most of it himself, just the aftermath. They’d stored the broken and bloody bodies in the cell next to the one they kept him in, so he could see, so he’d _ know_.

He tells them about Anna.

He doesn’t go into detail, keeps it vague- ‘_I was not equipped for torture_’- and leaves it at that. He doesn’t tell them exactly how long he spent in her clutches. He doesn’t tell them that he longed for the release of death but was too much a coward to do it himself, his sense of self-preservation too strong to allow it. He doesn’t tell them about the days spent in near-delirium, being sure that there was more of his blood on the table he was strapped to than in his body. That he knows what his organs look like, that he knows what he sounds like when begging for Anna to _ stop, please, gods what do you _ ** _want_ **\- 

He doesn’t tell them any of that.

He thinks they know anyway.

None of them question him, none of them judge him for wanting the Briarwoods dead, for wanting Ripley, Anders, and all the others responsible to share the same fate. If he can ignore the concerned looks from Keyleth, he can tell himself they’re okay with it, that they accept his unrelenting need for retribution. It’s _ reasonable_. They murdered his family, destroyed everything he cared about, and should be brought to task for it. Easy.

It isn’t easy.

He sees them at the dinner with Uriel, and it’s all he can do to stay upright and moving despite the way his knees want to turn to water at the sight of them. It’s a struggle to keep his voice steady when he wants to scream, to keep his arms calmly at his sides when he wants to rip them apart with his bare hands, to rid the world of them and the evil they pull along in their wake. He manages all of this and more, in what he considers to be one of the best displays of self control he’s ever exhibited.

Through it all, through the rest of the dinner, through the ensuing fight, through the visit to the temple to get Vax and Tiberius seen to, he feels it in his veins, thrumming. After, in his workshop, he feels it again, the sense of inherent _ wrongness _ inside. His hands shake with the effort it takes to not grab the nearest sharp object and slice himself open right down the middle, to check once and for all that everything is right, that everything is where it should be, that there’s nothing missing.

That nothing’s been _ added_.

He’s honestly not sure which would be worse- knowing for certain that something _ is _in fact wrong, or knowing things are as they should be and he’s just a paranoid wretch slowly crumbling under the strain.

At this point he doesn’t know that it matters.

He’ll hold himself together by the tattered remnants of his will alone if he has to; lord knows he’s done it before. He has a plan, such that cold vengeance and utter destruction is a plan, and he’ll do what needs to be done. He’ll deal with the writers of his family’s fate as he finds them, and for a moment he wonders. If he finds Ripley, will he have the wherewithal to ask, the nerve to demand an answer? He has no doubt she’ll decline to give it; she’ll probably revel in the opportunity, even at the end, to lord information over him, to retain some level of control, as if she hasn’t haunted his nightmares for years now.

They prepare to leave Emon for the trek to Whitestone, and Percy looks around his workshop. He looks at all he’s built, both literally and figuratively, and wonders if he’s ready. He’s most certainly not, he’ll never be ready, not really, but that’s neither here nor there. His goal in sight, even if at a bit of a distance, and he won’t be stopped, not now.

Mind made up, Percy gathers his things from the forge beneath Greyskull Keep, and doesn’t look back when he leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> So...yeah.  
I have thoughts about what Anna was doing that didn't make it into the fic, but it sort of sparked this off. My first C1 fic...woo!
> 
> Title taken from Amanda Palmer's 'Machete'.
> 
> If you want to say hi, have a comment, or wanna flail at me, you can find me on tumblr at [Analisegrey](http://analisegrey.tumblr.com/), or on Twitter at the same handle.


End file.
